


The Only Thing That's Real

by kiddywonkus



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen, anti-hurt/comfort, post-countrycide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-30
Updated: 2013-09-30
Packaged: 2017-12-28 00:44:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/985613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiddywonkus/pseuds/kiddywonkus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Countrycide</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Only Thing That's Real

It starts with blood. Or maybe not. A scream. Ianto doesn't really know how it starts, just that every time he closes his eyes, in that millisecond it takes for him to blink, he see the darkness, and the beast lurking within it. It's a shout at the void, heavy breathes, and the sticky feeling of blood coagulating underneath his eyelids. It starts and ends with any one of those, and it cycles for eternity. All of it he feels on his body, ebbing in the dark bruises that stretched across his skin. It's there, and when it's not, it's still there haunting the edges of his consciousness.  
  
He lies awake, counting the seconds before he has to blink again, the shattered pieces of his bedroom mirror scattered across the floor, reflecting the dim moonlight across his ceiling. The pattern reminds him of a shrapnel wound, and he rolls over to dry heave into his rubbish bin. He forgets that his mouth tastes like bile because all he can smell is rotting meat.  
  
He thinks it's been two days. He's lost count of the blinks, and the times the sun has appeared and gone away. He thinks it's been two days since he sat there, numb, on the boot of the SUV in the early morning air just barely coming to grips with what had happened; that Torchwood was there to save the world from aliens, and it was humans that nearly took them down.  
  
 _Torchwood is a scattershot_ , he realizes, _it's_   _indiscriminate_.  
  
In every world, in every person, is a monster. It hides in the darkness that everyone possesses. How could he deny it any longer? With Lisa's body cremated, and her ashes spread somewhere Jack would never tell, Ianto knew it was because somewhere inside of her was a monster; that the Cyberman was able to find that part, and twist her. Somewhere inside of him, he knew, was one too.

He thought about what he would do to Ewan Sherman, once the terror began fade into a dully thumping heart beat. He knew where Ewan was. Where his wife was. He would throw the two into the rift. No, a cage filled with Weevils and let them feel what it's like to lose control; to finally realize that there are things out there that do not possess any humanity at all, and he would watch as they screamed for mercy while he adjusted his tie, only walking away when their lifeless bodies thudded to the floor and the echoes of their screams drifted into silence.  
  
His forehead still throbs from when he head-butted their captors. He had remembered smiling when he did it, but not why. Did he do it because he needed to save someone? Because he knew he could have one last fuck you? Or did he do it because he needed it to be over?

It's that last question that turns over and over in his mind, amidst the screams and the blood and the darkness that always starts but never ends.

Ianto could live in a world where monsters existed, but he isn't sure if he can do it if it existed in everyone he ever loved or cared about; if it existed in him. He just needs it to be over. The fear of everything, the ambivalent feeling that perhaps death was the release, not just for him, but for everyone. He needs it to be over.  
  
He can hear movement in the other room: his refrigerator door being shut, his bin being moved around, and  a rustle of plastic. Jack had been there, cleaning up broken glass from Ianto's mirrors, and the noise means that Jack is still here. Ianto hears the sound of his windows opening, and smelling of rotting meat begins to dissipate as his body shivers in the invading night air.

When Jack comes into his room to open his window, Ianto doesn't pay attention. He listens to the sharp clatters of glass and the crinkling of the bin bag as Jack cleans up the room.

"I get why you would throw out the meat, Ianto. But not why it didn't make it outside."

Ianto doesn't answer. Jack sighs, leans the bag against the door frame, and sit down on the edge of Ianto's bed. In the moonlight, Ianto can only see the shadow of Jack's back, and he knows that Jack isn't facing him.

He waits for Jack to say something, but he doesn't. Instead, the seconds  tick by on Ianto's clock, and Ianto feels everything in the darkness when he blinks.  
  
"Jack?" he asks.

"Yeah, Ianto."

"You'll kill me if you have to, right?"  
  
A pause. "Yeah. I will."

Jack gets up, grabs the bag, and leaves the flat.

The moonlight no longer scatters across his ceiling; no longer makes him sick. Instead, what makes him sick, is knowing that Jack was lying. Hadn't Jack put a pistol up to his head, threatening to execute him? Yes. Did he do it? No. Ianto had called him a monster then, and he doesn't regret it. Because he was right. Jack is the same kind of monster Ianto is, and just as Ianto couldn't pull the trigger on Lisa, Jack could never be expected to do the same.

When Ianto hears his front door shut, he curls into a fetal position and tries not to sob.

**Author's Note:**

> This was in response to a Tumblr Confession which can be found here: http://boomslovingthealien.tumblr.com/post/62682501190/nancyelizabethbrown-id-read-that-the-why-is


End file.
